


Infamy

by fannishliss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pearl Harbor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2736611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunday, December 7, 1941, Steve and Bucky's lives change forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infamy

  
  
_Sunday, December 7, 1941_  
  
Steve wouldn’t shut up about it.  The troubles in Europe had led to a peacetime draft, but Bucky was determined not to be a volunteer.  If his number was called, that was well and good, he would go.  But he wasn’t walking into the jaws of death on his own like some mindless automaton.  
  
Plenty of folks saw things his way.  No less than Charles Lindbergh led rallies for the United States to keep to themselves and stay out of the endless cycle of European wars.  But Steve wouldn’t hear it.  His own father had been a casualty of the “War to end all Wars” — surviving his time in Europe but dying of complications from mustard gas only months after making it back home.  He’d never held his own son.  He’d left his wife alone to raise a baby without a father.  But Steve was muleheaded like that.  
  
Bucky didn’t have a wife or a kid, though plenty of fellas his age did. Bucky had his ma and his pa and his three little sisters — he still chipped in to the Barnes family income even now that he’d moved in with Steve.  But Steve was Bucky’s number one priority, even though he’d never dare admit it out loud.  He made excuses to his parents and gave them enough that Becky and Sal and Maggie would never go without — but it was always what was left over after he made sure the rent was paid and there was enough so Steve could eat and keep warm and breathe through the cold winter months.  Bucky’s suit got a little less sharp, his shoes a little thin in the sole, but it was worth it to see Steve looking hale, like he might make it through into 1942 without another bout of pneumonia.    
  
They were at the art class Bucky had found for Steve, and Steve had refused to take unless Bucky went with him.  Bucky sat there every week, trying his hand at contours and feeling pretty dumb, while Steve churned out sketches like Bucky thought should hang in the Met.  There was a pretty good band show that played on Sunday afternoons and the teacher left it on as she moved around the room, making suggestions, praising Steve’s use of negative space, telling Bucky to free up his arm a little more.  
  
No one was surprised at the interruption of the special bulletin.  Folks still paid attention of course, but after several years of special bulletins all the time, no one was startled.  It took a moment before the news set in: the Japanese had bombed a Navy port in Hawaii, and hundreds of Americans were dead.  
  
The teacher ended class early.  Bucky packed up his paper and pencils — nothing seemed real, or everything seemed too real.  Steve had that angry light in his eyes, burning to do something about it, whatever that meant.  Bucky knew his clock was ticking down.    
  
By the time they got home, Steve was talking.  Steve was always talking.  He followed the Roosevelts as far as they went, though like his mom, politically he was a lot further left.   The Barneses were much more middle of the road, but Sarah Rogers was a socialist and so was her son.    
  
“This means war,” Steve was saying.  Bucky nodded.  However he might have felt yesterday, he knew Steve was right today.  
  
Steve just talked and talked. He was chopping up cabbage and potatoes and onions and dropping them into boiling water with a few chicken bones Bucky’s ma had wrapped up for them after dinner that afternoon.  It seemed so long ago now.    
  
He made Bucky keep their radio on.  Bucky didn’t want to hear it.  He would have preferred to hear some music, any excuse to fix his mind on crooning and dancing and those sorts of dreams he kept to himself.  
  
At a quarter to seven Mrs. Roosevelt came on and Steve was pressed to the set, good ear straining not to miss a syllable.    
  
She told the young people of the nation what a golden opportunity was before them, how proud she was of them, how she was sure they were up to the challenge.    
  
Steve glowed with fervor, his pale cheeks heightened with color, blue eyes sparkling, lips chewed red with grim determination.    
  
Bucky felt sick.  He didn’t want to think of himself as any part of the valiant youth; he felt more like the mothers of the nation, the ones who would see their darling boys marched off into battle, the clutch of fear taking hold in their breasts.  Steve would try, and try, and try, and what if he never gave up? What if the war wore on until finally, they took him?  
  
Bucky wouldn’t be there.  He was strong and hearty.  He had an eagle eye and could run the mile in seven minutes no problem.  He’d be gone, doing the devil knew what, and Steve would still be here, all alone, eking out an existence with only his Irish temper to keep him warm.  
  
“Stevie,” Bucky said.    
  
Steve finally stopped talking.    
  
“What, Bucky?” he said.  
  
Bucky felt like a puppet on a string. Something was moving him — something so big he was powerless to resist.  He stood from his chair and crossed to Steve, and then he fell to one knee.  
  
Steve glared at him incredulously, ready to fly into a spitting rage.  Just as he opened his mouth to curse Bucky out, Bucky spoke.  
  
“Stevie,” Bucky said.  “You know I never said nothing.  I never did nothing.  I been good all this time, I took care o’ you like I shoulda an' no funny business.  Ain’t that the truth?”  
  
“Sure, Bucky,” Steve frowned.  “You never… whadda you mean…”  
  
“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky said, and miraculously, Steve closed his mouth. Bucky was down on one knee and he had to admit he’d never tried simply begging Steve to get him to shut up.  He didn’t really think he could bring himself to beg on a regular, but, every rule demanded its exceptions.  
  
“You remember ‘These are the times?'" Bucky prompted.  
  
Bucky and Steve had a game with speeches.  Back in school when the teacher would give them a long piece to learn by heart, they would practice together until they could start or stop at any point in the speech and the other would take it up without pausing.    
  
“… that try men’s souls,” Steve continued. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”  
  
Steve stopped and Bucky took it up:  “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered….”  
  
It was unusual for Bucky to break off again so soon, but Steve easily went on:  “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”  
  
Bucky lay his finger across Steve’s mouth, and the red flush that had hectored Steve’s cheeks all day went brighter.   “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly,” Bucky whispered, “it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”  
  
Bucky lightly caressed Steve’s soft, chapped mouth, that beautiful, stubborn, headstrong mouth he’d silently adored for so many years.    
  
“I don’t know if I’m a summer soldier or what,” Bucky said.  “All I know is, time is running out.  Maybe I thought I could play it safe, or maybe, somethin’s better than nothin’.  But now it seems like nothin’s starin’ me in the face.  I’m sorry, Stevie, I gotta say it.”  
  
Steve’s blue eyes, his heavy brows and concerned frown, his damned eyelashes and his perfect, rough lips — he sat stock still, breathing steady as he could, and didn’t say a word, his lips full and unresisting under Bucky’s finger.    
  
“I love you, Steve; I always have.  I know ain’t nothin’ can come of it, I don’t know what made me this way.  But I just had to say it.  Just one time.  I can’t bear the thought of going off …  without saying it.”  
  
Bucky felt his whole body tremble at the magnitude of his admission, but at the same time, he felt lighter. Surely Steve already knew.  Surely Bucky must’ve given himself away somehow ages ago, and Steve was too much of a stand up guy to let on anyhow.    
  
Then Bucky felt Steve’s lips move — not to shape those million hollow platitudes Bucky’s mind had cursed him with in untold repetitions:  
  
 _never mind Buck_  
 _you’ll grow out of it_  
 _you just haven’t met the right girl_  
 _you’re confused Bucky_  
 _it’s just I’m the brother you never had_  
  
Steve’s lips mouthed at Bucky’s finger, turning slightly to kiss— the tip of his tongue, the sharp little teeth — Steve had perfect straight white teeth, where Bucky’s had come in just a little crooked — the tip of Bucky’s finger was inside Steve’s mouth, and it was hot and wet like Bucky had never dared allow himself to dream, like sometimes he dreamed of anyway.  
  
Steve’s eyes were open, staring into Bucky, daring him to blink, and Bucky wouldn’t blink.  Steve’s blue eyes had never been so black, and the rest of the world fell away as Steve sucked at Bucky’s finger like it was his favorite hard candy.    
  
Steve’s hand came up, that long, bony hand still smudged with ink from the art class just that afternoon — and Steve’s hand wrapped around Bucky’s wrist, so strong, so firm, holding Bucky’s finger in place as Steve savaged it with his hot mouth and teeth and tongue.  
  
Heat and cold chased through Bucky as Steve’s other hand landed on Bucky’s shoulder, slip up to grasp the back of his neck, pulled him in.  
  
His finger fell away as his lips touched Steve’s, as they breathed one breath and the world spun around them.    
  
“We’re not wasting one more second,” Steve pronounced.    
  
Bucky didn’t care to argue.    

**Author's Note:**

> Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet doesn't actually contain the words "the winter soldier".... but it is where folks got the name of their investigation of atrocities in Vietnam.  
> http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1776-1785/thomas-paine-american-crisis/chapter-i---the-american-crisis---december-23-1776.php  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation
> 
>  
> 
> There was a great radio program on this evening about the Roosevelts. Eleanor broadcast her statement on the radio after Pearl Harbor before Franklin did, at 6:45 pm on Sunday. His famous speech was made on Monday.  
> http://www.americanradioworks.org/documentaries/roosevelts/


End file.
